beware the zombie apocalypse

Tom Scott is a young educational entertainer who publishes fairly regularly on youtube. Back in mid 2004, whilst still a linguistics student at York, he managed to upset both the Home Office and the Cabinet Office by publishing a Department of Vague Paranoia website spoofing the rather po faced official “Preparing for Emergencies” site. Tom’s website is still in operation – unlike the official one. I guess Tom never aspired to a career in the Civil Service.

I mention Tom here because I have just discovered his youtube channel called “The Basics” in which he addresses some of the complexities of computer science in ways which are accessible to a wide audience. In particular, he has a very good exposition of why encryption backdoors are not a terribly good idea. Take a look at the clip below:

I commend that clip to anyone who still adheres to the kind of “magic thinking” that leads them to believe that the laws of mathematics can be ignored, or that only the “good” guys (whoever they are) would ever take advantage of crippled encryption.

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